The problem here is the graphics drivers; on your system they're taking longer to load than it takes to check and mount the filesystem - so there's no reason to start the splash screen, since we can already start X.

On HDD-based systems this is worse because we do the ureadahead phase before loading drivers; thus it can take a long time for a splash to appear.

One "solution" is to use the initramfs and start plymouth as a critical step:

A plan for Beta 2, if it works, is to "early load" the graphics drivers - basically delaying the ureadahead phase until after virtual filesystems are mounted (which is the large period of black screen)

summary:

- X server starts before Plymouth+ X server starts before Plymouth, or a very short time after (no or brief+ splash)

This worked for me before. Until I tried setting a different splash in alpha3, it worked fine. After that, it completely stopped working, giving and error about being unable to write because of broken pipes. Upgrading to beta1 fixed the shutdown, but not the boot.

Maybe also noteworthy is that the initial screen resolution is low, then the screen flickers and comes to a higher resolution. This could possibly be optimised via KMS to get to the full resolution right from the start.

My Kubuntu RC live CD can display Plymouth (do you mean that crude textual "Ubuntu 10.04" with four textual dots?), but not a HDD installation of 10.04 (whether clean install or upgrade). On the upgraded installation, the bootup even hangs completely.

For me works the same as Bratmaxe, "Plymouth is showing at shutdown, but not the at boot, sometimes it shows at boot but only a half second or so". I tried the workaround, and now it's perfect. Only tested once though. Boot time does not seem longer. This is on Intel x4500HD.

@Uri Shabtay: Sorry, should have been more clear. It's the one Christian Göbel describes also in the last post. I have now tried several reboots and it still works perfectly. Why isn't this default on Intel hardware? Most people could live with one more second of waiting, to have it look nice :)

I just installed some updates - and now I do see the splash on boot.. But before it comes up I see a little bit of console boot up noise (not that I care, just thought the point of Plymouth was to make things really pretty and uniform). Anyway, boot seems a little bit lengthy right now too, but I don't have substantial info and it's tolerable.

One thing I have found out in my time within Launchpad bugs in Ubuntu is when
Scott James Remnant has posted something you can take it to the bank. That is just
a plain fact. He has explained here why plymouth is having trouble because loading graphic drivers
before you mount is having some trouble. I have
a Brother who is a UNIX IT and he tells me if you want pure boot speed do not even turn the machine on.
Told me didn't he.

The fix proposed works every time. From my experience, therefore, out-of-the-box
lucid bug is just plain ugly, with text and blinking cursors. The fix is already there,
and works, will it be available by default anytime?

Although not totally related I experienced this after correcting a SWAP UUID problem. I had resized my SWAP, thus changing the UUID, and after correcting the UUID's in /etc/fstab and /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume, then running "update-initramfs -u" I was still unable to restore the plymouth "quiet splash".

I'd just have a black screen until gdm. If I reinstalled plymouth the "quiet splash" would work one time, then stop again. Creating "/etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash" with "FRAMEBUFFER=y" and again running "update-initramfs -u" seems to have "fixed" this with no extreme slow-down in boot.

I probably just need to learn some new tricks regarding UUID hell w/plymouth, ureadahead, and mountall.

RE: my last post. Errm, it's not just due to resizing SWAP, or perhaps not at all.

I'm building a box specifically for testing. I began with three primary partitions; 50GB, 20GB, 20GB, thinking that I'd use sda1 for virtual machine stuff. For some reason I had trouble with SWAP which was on the far right end of the drive, but I'd copied SWAP and four logical data partitions from another machine.

Anyway, today I decided it would be smarter to go 20GB, 20GB, 50GB in case I decided to increase the size of the OS with the virtual setup(s). I'm building right to left in the extended partition so I'll have room to play with.

Bottom line is after resizing the three primary partitions the newest Lucid did the same exact thing! No quiet splash at all, just a black screen! SWAP was not changed at all and it still mounts properly. No UUID's changed.

My previous post was in reference to sda1 which is still Lucid, I'm just planning to convert it to Maverick. That sda3 is also Lucid and I'd planned on using it for building virtual machines (for testing). The one on sda3 is the latest to have plymouth fail after resizing.

I'm just curious why resizing a lucid partition would result in no splash?

I know this looks and sounds confusing :^(

BTW sda10, 11, and 12 are not even used yet but one will be Squeeze, another Mint 9, then I'll...

What I discovered regarding the loss of plymouth's "quiet splash", both after correcting the UUID problem created by resizing SWAP, and also after resizing/moving a Lucid root "/" partition was that, in both instances, simply forcing a reprofile of ureadahead by removing the "pack" files in /var/lib/ureadahead and rebooting. Specific recap:

Test case #1) I had resized/moved the Lucid root partition and lost the "quiet splash". I had only the black screen with perhaps 1 second of "plymouth" and then the login screen, and no "plymouth" at all on shutdown or reboot. I had not created an /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash w/FRAMEBUFFER=y. After forcing a reprofile of ureadahead by removing the "pack" files in /var/lib/ureadahead and rebooting all had returned to normal. I have rebooted numerous times and all is well.

Test case #2) I had resized a SWAP partition due to hardware changes and after correcting the UUID's in /etc/fstab and /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume, and updating initramfs, I was still not able to restore the "quiet splash". Just as above I only got a black screen with perhaps 1 second of "plymouth" and then the login screen, and no "plymouth" at all on shutdown or reboot.

I then created an /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash w/FRAMEBUFFER=y which restored "plymouth" but I really wanted to restore things to their original state. So having succeeded in test case #1 I went ahead and removed the new /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash, rebooted to be sure I hadn't totally broken anything and then once again forced a reprofile of ureadahead. Voila, success again :^)

So I guess that if someone had a "quiet splash" at one time and lost it for some reason, whether repartitioning or anything else, it's certainly worth trying to force a reprofile of ureadahead. I can't imagine it doing any harm.

I tried the commands in comments #2 and #29. I've an ATI Radeon 7500 on a Compaq Evo N610c laptop.
Boot time before was 40.5 seconds and boot time after was 41.3 seconds. I noticed however, that booting is faster when I shut down and then start vs. when I "restart" - restarting took 46.7 sec (before the changes). In both cases, I start the timer from the grub screen when I select the operating system (still using Karmic until I get all the Lucid issues resolved...).

I tried the workaround from comment #2 but unfortunately, it does not work as expected. I get the same result as before, that is a few seconds of a blinking cursor in low-res mode, then a few seconds of blinking cursor in high-res mode, then about one to two seconds of splash screen and then GDM. My graphics card is an Intel integrated into the Core i3-370m.

I take it all back! :-)
It seems it takes a while for the mobo's on-board video to turn on. I installed a nvidia video card and the boot splash shows. However, after installing the nvidia video driver the splash screen resolution is lower than 1920 x 1080 that I have my display set at.

So, it's working (don't know if the "work around" was ever needed), now if someone can just tell me how to adjust the splash resolution...

Same issue here, fresh install of Natty - so new in fact that I just wiped my system and re-installed prior to writing this message. I get one or two seconds of black screen with a flashing cursor, then 10-15 seconds of black screen (sans cursor), then maybe the boot splash will appear for a brief moment, followed by my desktop.

The workaround in comment #2 does not work for me, nor does the Lucid/Maverick "fix the big and ugly logo" method (which includes the steps from comment #2).

I have problems with the Plymouth since I started using Kubuntu 3 years ago. I have a nVidia GeForce 8400.

Depending of the system version, the plymoth was only text or had a wrong resolution.
In 12.10 with the 304 drivers I had wrong resolution, with 310 only text. Now in 13.04 with 304 310 and 313 drivers I only have text in the Plymoth.

I don't know how much difficult is solve this, but this bug exists for YEARS. It gives bad image to the users, and the importance shouldn't be so low to developers since it's supossed that Ubuntu gives importance to a good apperance.